President Tsai Ing-wen has urged China to pursue democratic reform in a Facebook post commemorating the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre.
The post, published Saturday, was Tsai’s first public commentary on the 1989 massacre since she took office in May. Tsai wrote that by granting China’s citizens more rights, Beijing can win more respect from the rest of the world.
She said that visitors from China often spend a long time in Taiwanese bookstores reading about the China they don’t hear about at home. She also said that Chinese visitors are full of curiosity about Taiwan’s democratic elections.
But Tsai said that Taiwan’s democracy was the hard-won result of a difficult struggle. She said that this struggle is the reason why so many Taiwanese identified so strongly with the scenes from Beijing they saw on their TV screens in 1989.
Tsai said that her intent is not to criticize China’s political system but to share Taiwan’s experience with democratization. She recognized China’s strong economic growth and the improvements it has brought to the lives of China’s people.
But Tsai said that the time has come to face the past while moving towards the future. She said she hopes that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait will one day come to value democracy and human rights in the same way.